[The Clockwork Rat]

Let's say two people are designing a car. One of them wants a car that can pull heavy loads, and the other wants one that can go fast. Two problems - two different solutions. They only have enough resources to build one car.

[Donna]

You seem to think that nothing can be done, so nothing should be done, so the only thing to do is sit on our hands waiting until the magic of communism comes and fixes the world! You people are just as diluted as Libertarians.

I'm not saying that at all. There are things people can and will do to protect their own class interests, that is all. It is these conflicts between the classes that shape history, ideology, crises, revolutions, recuperation, reform, etc. etc.

[Wolfman]

Let's say two people are designing a car. One of them wants a car that can pull heavy loads, and the other wants one that can go fast. Two problems - two different solutions. They only have enough resources to build one car.

With a gas engine, you can do both, actually. The only real difference is in gear ratio in the transmission. If you're building a car from scratch, you can accomplish both goals with a manual transmission that has a certain number of positions dedicated to speed, and a certain number to power. There, everyone gets their way.

And that, boys and girls, is how you fix the world's problems.

[Donna]

Unless you're an avatar for every Communist who is completely unable to look at their own ideology.

That's a bit of a paradox because most Communists believe their ideology is, like, super correct and stuff:

The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression.

[Vera Politica]

[VP Note: All Childish bickering and off-topic posts have been deleted. Warnings have also been issued. I will no tolerate this nonsense.]

[Gletkin]

(Modern) Liberalism is the often-maligned yet inevitable fallback plan of socialism.

When you fail to climb, you slide back to whence you came.

[SolarCross]

I think when working class movements started actually making rival quasi or notionally socialist states around the world with the most potent being the USSR the capitalists had to find ways to soften the brutality of capitalism to bribe their own subjects from revolting against them too. Thus comes the welfare state, votes for the working man, subsidised health care, minimum wage and health & safety regulations and all the rest. Liberalism is the ideological cover for this. But since the USSR fell apart and the rest of the quasi socialist states have either sold out or are neglible influence, the capitalists are seeking ways to undo all the benefits they conceded to their subjects over 20th century. The current economic crisis, I believe, was contrived to serve just that agenda. Of course good ideas never altogether die. It may be that as the capitalists feel safe reverting to their true nature and become more nakedly brutal and exploitative a new wave of revolutionary movements will emerge to counter. OWS is the beginnings of that.

[Someone5]

With a gas engine, you can do both, actually. The only real difference is in gear ratio in the transmission. If you're building a car from scratch, you can accomplish both goals with a manual transmission that has a certain number of positions dedicated to speed, and a certain number to power. There, everyone gets their way.

And that, boys and girls, is how you fix the world's problems.

More to it than that. The car's frame also needs to be reinforced for heavy loads, and that increases speed, thus requiring a larger engine or an acceptance of reduced acceleration. Larger engines themselves use more fuel (requiring a larger tank or more frequent fills) and take up more volume and weight (thereby slowing the vehicle further).

While the very essential basic criteria of having varying gear ratios can be solved, that is not the sum total of the problem. Incidentally this is also why there are different kinds of pickup trucks, and why pickup trucks designed for hauling stuff aren't marketed the same way as pickup trucks designed to be a personal vehicle. The manufacturers pretty much figured out that you can't have both. Not without it being astronomically expensive anyway.

[Negotiator]

(Modern) Liberalism is the often-maligned yet inevitable fallback plan of socialism.

When you fail to climb, you slide back to whence you came.

Liberals and Socialists have the same origin, the Enlightenment. I thus dont get your claim Socialism is where Liberals come from.

[Soixante-Retard]

Liberals and Socialists have the same origin, the Enlightenment. I thus dont get your claim Socialism is where Liberals come from.

Except for Liberalism predates Socialism and Socialism is l'enfant terrible of Liberalism.

[The Clockwork Rat]

^ Holy shit, you got it right!

[Soixante-Retard]

^ ?

===

Shouldn't the title of this thread be "Has socialism murdered liberalism?", to which my response would be socialism has stabbed liberalism a bit but liberty, thankfully, persists.

[The Clockwork Rat]

Socialism was a reaction against liberal philosophy and governance, thus could not have existed without liberalism pre-dating it. In this sense, liberalism did give birth to socialism, so calling the latter l'enfant terrible is spot on.

[Rei Murasame]

Pretty much. And l'enfant terrible was in fact so scary that liberalism decided that it was imperative to adapt itself a little to the times, and thus, the welfare state was born, along with lots of nice-sounding rhetoric about ring-fencing of public services.

And it is in this way that liberalism hopes to maintain its power and slowly strangle the socialism that it gave birth to.

[The Clockwork Rat]

So sayeth the dialectic

[Rei Murasame]

And the people said 'Amen'.

Liberalism doesn't seem like it's equipped to carry on this fight indefinitely though, so interesting times lie possibly ahead.

Now that it has reached this point, financialisation having culminated in the 2007 crisis, with certain financial institutions re-hypothecating to the point where only 25% of their transactions even have asset backing, their flagrant bankruptcies are offset by their political ability to zero-out everyone else. That ability allows them to bust everyone else's assets and the price of their labour down into the floor, and then repeat the whole ridiculous process again after grabbing onto those zero'd assets in what is essentially a fire sale.

Where liberal and libertarian ideas serve to maintain this sickening and disastrous cycle, seems to be that they deny not only that the original ancient expropriation* happened, but they are in the present era encouraging people to continue to consent to an ongoing appropriation by continually instilling and repeating 'moral' lessons which attempt to denigrate, de-legitimise, or otherwise suppress any ideas that involve mass organisation by anyone other than finance.

This can be beaten, though.

So long as people look around and be vigilant and keep pointing out to other people the evidence of the ancient and the ongoing and how they are connected, and that this connection is indeed objectively true, it can be possible for socialists, third position nationalists and ethnoregionalists, and any other anti-liberal movement to light a spark of resistance.

* Whether it is seen it as progressive, non-progressive, or could've-been-done-a-nicer-way, doesn't matter, although I prefer the third narrative, at the end of the day I just don't want people to deny that it actually occurred.

________________________

These sparks I think are most easy to make when the guardians of the liberal-capitalist system are forced to reclaim something that they had previously placed far from consideration.

• Example one, the liberals say that it is not acceptable to bail out companies such as Cadbury's Chocolate or the train-making companies with public money 'because hur hur that - purportedly - ain't capitalism don'cha know, and we iz tryin'a be capitalist mkay'[!], but later on they are forced to bail out banks with the largest bail out in human history, while the rest of the sectors of the economy are told to go and suck a lemon and wait for the bail-out money to trickle down.
  
  We bring the word: "Oh my dear angry middle class corner-shop-owning friend, why do these mysterious things happen at your expense? Let me tell you about how they lied, and about how this pain you feel now is the true nature of the liberal-capitalist system!" And so we have made a spark of resistance in that moment.
  
  
  
• Example two, liberals blow and toot on all sorts of racialised dog whistles for years, 'because you know hur hur - supposedly - its better if we stick to our own kind when we can mkay'[!], but later on they drown the country in a flood of immigration and find themselves masturbating over pictures of an African-American man named Herman Cain because he supports economic policies that they like.
  
  We bring the word: "Oh my dear angry middle class secretary-girl friend, why do these infuriating things happen to ethnically-loyal people like you? Let me tell you about how they lied, and about how this pain you feel now is the true nature of the liberal-capitalist system!" And so another spark of resistance is created in that moment.
  
  
  
• Example three, liberals promised over and over again that in exchange for everyone's co-operation and peaceful agreement to support their economic prescriptions since 1970, they would maintain the justification for it, that justification being a nice spread of wealth created by capitalism-of-the-people, where your wallet is your vote, 'because they're never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you mkay[!]. Until now, since now they tell you that you are disgusting lazy layabout child-benefit-scrounging gutter filth who shouldn't even have access to the monkey bars in the cage of a zoo, much less that new refrigerator for your kitchen that you really need to have.
  
  We bring the word: "Oh my dear angry working class factory-worker friend, why do these mortifying betrayals happen to gullible people like you? Let me tell you about how they lied, and about how this pain you feel now is the true nature of the liberal-capitalist system!" And so we have made yet another spark of resistance in that moment.

And so on. So take heart, don't be glum, and stay the course. Whether you be nationalist or socialist, the opportunities to strike a spark of light in people's lives are all around.

[Soundtrack]

[SolarCross]

It is funny how the meaning of words changes over time. A hundred years ago 'gay' meant happy, carefree now it means a sodomist. Two or three hundred years ago liberalism meant 'liberty, fraternity and equality' now it apparently means a financial rape circus. Oh well we are where we are. If liberalism is epic financial fraud enslaving through currency debt entire nations then liberalism has to go no matter what may replace it.

[Rei Murasame]

Two or three hundred years ago liberalism meant 'liberty, fraternity and equality' now it apparently means a financial rape circus. Oh well we are where we are. If liberalism is epic financial fraud enslaving through currency debt entire nations then liberalism has to go no matter what may replace it.

That is well said. Very beautiful.

[SolarCross]

Thank you, it was substantially inspired by these even more beautiful and well said words that you may recognise ..

Where liberal and libertarian ideas serve to maintain this sickening and disastrous cycle, seems to be that they deny not only that the original ancient expropriation* happened, but they are in the present era encouraging people to continue to consent to an ongoing appropriation by continually instilling and repeating 'moral' lessons which attempt to denigrate, de-legitimise, or otherwise suppress any ideas that involve mass organisation by anyone other than finance.

This can be beaten, though.

So long as people look around and be vigilant and keep pointing out to other people the evidence of the ancient and the ongoing and how they are connected, and that this connection is indeed objectively true, it can be possible for socialists, third position nationalists and ethnoregionalists, and any other anti-liberal movement to light a spark of resistance.

and..

And so on. So take heart, don't be glum, and stay the course. Whether you be nationalist or socialist, the opportunities to strike a spark of light in people's lives are all around.

[steve71]

If liberalism has murdered socialism, who forgot to tell the French?